Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday September 07, 2011 @06:00PM
from the last-call dept.

spagiola writes "Late last week, a military transport aircraft with 17 people on -board went missing near Robinson Crusoe, Chile. The relatives of one of the crash victims logged into Find My iPhone and were able to isolate the coordinates of the last known whereabouts of the plane before it crashed. From the article: 'Rear Admiral Francisco García-Huidobro explained the founding that
garnered a lot of attention today, and it has to do with an iPhone belonging to
one of the victims of the aereal accident in Juan Fernández, in a beach
in Bahía Carvajal. The phone signal could be captured thanks to the GPS system, however, water
ended up shutting it down. Nevertheless, García Huidoro explained that they
managed to plot the last position from where the signal was last generated, which
will be made public tomorrow.'"

Did you look at a map? The plane crashed near an island which is 600 Kilometres away from the Chilenian coast. I dare say that the lack of cell towers would make a triangulation through said cell towers a bit difficult.

They can lose a military transport that easy? Or worse yet, they can track on that easy using a phone?

Don't these aircraft have something more advanced than an iphone app, and for the sake of security, even if they weren't on a military mission shouldn't have that been reason enough to turn off possible tracking devices, such as phones? God knows, we read articles about phone tracking every day.

I wonder if missiles can be made to follow the emissions of a phone. That could have some interesting applications

Military aircraft in the region are often used to support scientific missions and for other civilian purposes. Even if a true military flight, say transportation of cargo, they may allow civilians and off duty military personnel to hitch a ride if there is nothing classified on board. Not every military flight is performed under combat conditions. Sometimes they communicate with civilian air traffic control, have their transponder broadcasting an ID, have all the navigation lights turned on, and may very we

that was my first thought. 2011 and we can't find planes when they crash unless someone onboard has an iPhone? Plane worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and we have to use a $250 iPhone to find it, doesn't that seem wrong?

If it's military, it often DOESN'T want to be easy to track. So I don't think you'll find an RFP from the Program Office for their military planes adding a requirement for a squawk that anyone can track. But, yes they should have on during a normal flight a friend indicator for air traffic control. However, it might be possible their SOPs didn't tell them to turn it on for whatever reason. Only their pilots could answer this question.

Where the people on board military or civilians bringing aid to the earthquake affected area?

I'd be interested if any military doesn't allow this sort of program since location of a classified or covert operation could easily be shown. Or if someone hacks an account they could track where the person goes/where their base is/etc...

To put this in a bit of context, Robinson Crusoe Island (Isla Juan Fernandez is the official name) is very isolated and mostly inhabited by fishermen, and some scientific personnel. It was heavily struck by the tsunami after the earthquake last year, so the national state TV (TVN) conducted a series of short shows about the reconstruction of the island. The flight was carrying personnel to record a follow-up show.

This was a military operated flight, but only brought civilians (two well-known TV presenters, persons from the National Culture Council, camera men, producers, and people related with the TV network, a businessman and philanthropist which had a ONG regarding the reconstruction, and personnel of said ONG) to record the show, so to answer your question, no, probably there were no problems regarding the tracking of military operations.

So far the weather conditions plus the fact that the plane crashed at sea has caused that only few bodies have been found (4 confirmed out of 21), so the signal from the iPhone was an important lead to the victims' bodies whereabouts. It certainly beats the clairvoyants they are also using (seriously).

I wasnt questioning it on this particular instance, I was just curious in place such as Pakistan where a covert sometimes legal, sometimes illegal operation may occur, if someone has such a tracking program on their phone whether they are just expected to not bring a phone or if just such programs are outright disallowed.

On further reflection I guess this data is already stored in iPhones at some level in the way that created a big stink earlier this year.

Chilean Air Force and Navy make regular trips to supply their remote islands (Juan Fernandez, Easter Island). It is pretty normal to catch a ride in one of these planes or Navy transports if you know somebody. They had to fly there anyways so all these civilians tagged along.

But I've always wondered what would've happened if in 1972, they had GPS and mapping technology the way we do today. They could've easily seen where they were without the guesswork and literally strolled off the mountain to the east in less than a day, perhaps. A 20km walk to the east would've gotten them to the highway at least... and at least they would've been off the mountain into thicker and a warmer atmosphere. Not to mention they may have been able to forage for food quickly. ( http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=Uruguayan+Air+Force+Flight+571+-+Mendoza+Province,+Argentina&hl=en [google.com] )

I hope technology will improve our chances of survival with accidents like this in the future.

I'm not sure what kind of GPS application the iPhone or Android have by default, but every Nokia product I've owned since the N95 (and plenty of Garmin / Magellen units over the years) minimally have major cities and often major roads included by default. On the N900 I have about 9 different mapping applications installed, all of these can be used without cellular or wifi because they all have the ability to use maps that are stored on the file system. I'm

Wow! You're saying that if you fly from say Brussels to Cairo, you make sure you have the maps of all countries your plane will "traverse" in case the plane would crash ? Now, that is preparation indeed !

Obviously, if someone had been carrying their GPS Map device, they'd've been able to find their way out. I wonder, though, about your typical smart phone. Many mapping applications nowadays use the Internet. No Internet, no map. I would--perhaps rashly--tend to doubt they had cellphone coverage where they crashed. So while they might be able to figure that they were 34.765 degrees South and 70.286389 degrees West, that might not have been much help without appropriate maps showing latitude and longitud

Also, most phones have AGPS--Assisted GPS. I don't know how well they work without a reasonable cellular network behind them.

In my experience (and from what I read about it), it's as it says: assisted. The phone will use the mobile network to help find an initial fix - how accurate that is depends on the network. And if I understand it correctly, it even needs a network connection (wifi, mobile data) for that to work. It can be as accurate as 10 meters or so. It is mainly used to get a quick initial location fix; it can take over 10 minutes for GPS to get a fix, as it takes that long to get exact time/location data from the satel

I was thinking along those lines too and then I remembered; the primary source for their GPS technology would be from the cockpit. Airplanes today would have a GPS tracker and probably enough maps for their route.

In other words, the pilots wouldn't have even made the miscalculation of not flying through the pass far enough; they would've seen that either they had enough fuel to make it or not enough and turned back.

If they did somehow crash, their last GPS position should have been known as well by rescuer

GPS as I said is passive by nature - only if the plane actively sends back its location to say the control tower they know where it is. That's to this date - think of the trouble they had locating that Air France flight over the ocean, besides that it was of course deep sea, they only had a rough idea on where the plane had come down. And where it came down was probably out of range of normal traffic control.

I don't know the exact circumstances or the terrain where this plane crashed, but some things are clear.

It was high up in a mountain in the snow, during winter. You don't walk 20 km in a day in those conditions, especially not people that are not used to that (like your average airplane passenger aka crash survivor). The plane wreckage provided them with shelter, which you won't find easily elsewhere on a mountain. Probably the people involved also didn't have (enough) warm clothes and so to make it.

It's a little known fact, but Ronald Reagan made the decision back in the 80's that we'd allow civilian use of GPS after the Russians shot down the civilian passenger plane that had veered off course, and into their airspace. It was Sept 1, 1983. Selective Avail was set to next to nothing and A/S was off. So civilians had near-military level of precision. In the early 90s it was turned, effectively, completely off. I was on one of the crews and one of 4 Satellite System Operators that turned it the ind

Gee, how did we ever find plane crashes before we had iPhones? You'd think we need to tape an iPhone to the fuselage of every plane to keep track of all these things. Is there some kind of app for air traffic controllers to keep track of all these airborne iPhones? Is there one for Android? Someone needs to get on this.

Yes I did, which is why I called shenanigans. This can't be being performed with the iCloud/MobileMe Find My iPhone service, because that service does not cache any last known locations. It's a live request designed for live devices. Otherwise Apple would be randomly uploading and collecting GPS locations which... hrm... seemed to have caused a fracas just a little while ago.

For this scenario to work, the relative would have had to trigger a location request BEFORE the crash, or else the carrier would have

Not after the crash; the phone managed to connect to a data network sometime before the plane crashed. I've (accidentally) left my phone on and later noticed that it connected to a cell network somewhere over the midwest during a coast-to-coast flight. So it's possible even at cruising altitude.

Felipe Cubillos, progressive businessman and beloved philanthropist, leader of post-earthquake rebuilding campaign "Desafio Levantémos a Chile" (Lift Up Chile Challenge).Felipe Camiroaga, TV personality and reporter, on the flight to do a story on rebuilding efforts being conducted on the islands.

For starters: GPS is passive. A GPS device knows where it is; but the GPS satellites have no idea who is listening to their signals, if anyone at all, let alone where they are. So while the plane likely had GPS receivers, so the pilot knows where they are, the plane normally doesn't tell the world where it is.

In this case said phone apparently has a tracking function active, and regularly sends its current location to a tracking server. Then the wife of one of t

I'm pretty sure every airline knows where their planes are at any given moment.

If you mean that as in "at which airport, or on which route, and when it will arrive at the next destination" then sure, they will know.

If you mean with that as in "at which exact location above the globe" with exact being less than km resolution, then I'd guess not. Even so, when there is a problem with a plane and it loses contact for whatever reason, it may easily be 100 km away from such a point by the time of a crash.

Just to give context, the FAA until very recently banned usage of GPS for navigation. They wanted pilots to rely on tried and true legacy practices that were proven. Only recently have they opened up to allowing GPS usage.

Chile appears to buy military planes from the US, from a quick Google search I did. However, they would more likely have utilized a dual system that is called INS/GPS. GPS gives an initial fix, but then inertial navigation system is used. Pilots aren't like car drivers. They don't ju

My wife's phone was stolen from her hospital room while she was down the hall getting an MRI. We suspected the hospital staff but of course there was no way to prove it. Later that day I logged onto the Find my iPhone website and saw that it was in a neighborhood about 20 miles away. I drove to the edge of the subdivision where it was pointing me to and I called the police to let them know that I had tracked down a stolen iPhone and that I needed their help getting it back. They sent out an officer who too